Summations Only

I've reread your Message 560 several times and see no explanations. I think I have pretty much the same questions as Edge.There is clear evidence of significant erosion of:

• The surface of the Vishnu Schist below the Unkar Group
• The surface of the Nankoweap Formation below the Chuar Group
• The tilted surface of the Grand Canyon supergroup below the Tapeats
• The surface of the Muav Limestone beneath the Temple Butte

Given all this evidence of significant erosion during the deposition of this sedimentary stack of layers, how can you state that "massive erosion didn't occur at any point during their laying down." This is one thing Edge was trying to understand. It's like you're staring at white and calling it black.Here's another excerpt from your message: Given that erosion and the subsequent formation of canyons and later buttes couldn't begin until the region was uplifted (prior to uplift it would have been a region of net deposition), there seems no basis for your skepticism. That's why Edge was asking for an explanation, and I'm wondering, too.--Percy

And what did it drop into? A magic black hole?Enjoy

Is that what you believe?Frankly, it's kind of hard for me to believe that the oceans ever had any base other than oceanic crust. Then, it's hard to believe that the oceanic crust had the same density so as to have the same elevation position as continental crust.That would be unless the continents themselves formed during your flood, which (literally) doesn't hold water since people ostensibly lived on continents prior to that flood.What would be the cause for the ocean basins to subside and do it so quickly that runoff from the continents would be so erosive as you indicate?Basically, I'm saying that if you adhere to this position, you have a lot of explaining to do.

I think that Faith avoids such complications by restricting herself to the just the Paleozoic section of the Grand Canyon, and by use of the term 'significant' where she is the one that defines what is significant.It's all very silly placing all of these restrictions on the discussion because one could just as likely say that there should be evidence of significant erosion within the Redwall Limestone itself. And we don't see that do we?And I'm not even getting into what was happening in the rest of the world at the same time as these platform deposits in the Grand Canyon were being deposited. It just goes to show that if we restrict our sample set enough, we can come up with whatever results we want.

If all you're talking about is the Precambrian rocks that doesn't say anything about the hundreds of millions of years from there up through the Tertiary where no massive erosion had occurred and only began at that point. But if you want to insist on the Precambrian I still claim that that was formed at the same time as the massive erosion in general, displacing the rocks beneath the Cambrian, including volcanic effects and so on. It's something for future testing.

Actually, we are talking about all of the data, not just the Precambrian, or the Paleozoic, or the Tertiary. Nonsense. There is no law that says large accumulations of sediments cannot occur without erosion. And, in fact, we do have some erosion within the Phanerozoic rocks - it just doesn't meet your criteria for 'significant' erosion. This idea is wrong in so many ways that it leaves me speechless that anyone could conjure up such a scenario. Just to leave you with a question: If this were so, how do you explain the presence of the Cardenas Basalt flows in the middle of the GC Supergroup?

I'm not sure what to say. Frankly, I read this statement several times and decided to ignore it until there is some clarification by Faith on what she is talking about.It is representative of the confusion caused by YEC thinking. Something that is soft cannot be compacted very hard until it is lithified, at which time it is no longer soft.(shakes head...)Edited by edge, : No reason given.

No, of course I'm not just talking about the Precambrian. I also mentioned the Mauv Limestone and the Temple Butte, which are from the Cambrian and Devonian respectively. The upper contact of the Temple Butte with the overlying Redwall Limestone represents yet another uncomformity, though not as dramatic as its lower contact.Regions will only become areas of net erosion when they are uplifted. Which layers do you expect should display evidence of "massive erosion", and why? Your belief that deeply buried layers can tilt remains yet another of your peculiar views with no evidence and that appear to be physically impossible.--Percy

Yes, she misuses the terminology, but I was hopeful that another voice might help her reconsider her belief that rock is initially soft until it dries. You communicated your skepticism in an earlier post (asking how a cliff face could support itself if made of soft easily-eroded rock, a question posed to Faith before), but you didn't provide any technical reasons.--Percy

Her reasoning is garbled enough that I'm not sure what she actually means.Drying alone does not create a hard rock. One needs cementation or some kind of crystallization/recrystallization to get a hard rock. In mining, we say that the material 'runs' if it is unconsolidated. I've seen lots of dry sediments that are simply unconsolidated sand or clay, and I wouldn't work under that kind of material. I'm sure that OSHA would agree.Typically, burial compaction drives off water, but in this case, if you are going to erode the Grand Canyon while sediments are soft and not fully dewatered or lithified, as Faith says, they could not support a steep slope of any height.I'm not sure if this helps to clear things up, but if I had more to work with, I could elaborate.

Small local erosion is not the massive erosion I was pointing out.

I never said that drying alone creates a hard rock. What I said was that COMPACTION hardens the sediments enough for them to be carved without slumping.

Well, those are pretty subjective terms, so your statement ia impossible to be falsified.However, there is no evidence that the rocks were unlithified during erosion. In fact, I think that the evidence would show that the Vishnu, Unkar and Chuar Group rocks were certainly lithified when they were eroded at their respective unconformities. However, the fact remains that soft sediments will not support slopes and cliffs of the type we see at the GC.In fact, I'd say that there is evidence that erosion exploited brittle fractures in the rocks which suggests prior lithification. The Bright Angel Fault was certainly one zone of weakness in otherwise competent rock, that controlled erosion. There is no reason for such a pattern if the rocks are not completely lithified.For you to say 'hard enough' is kind of a meaningless statement, since I could say the same thing about lithified rock. They were hard enough to resist flow during and after erosion of the canyon.

You keep insisting on talking about everything but the point I was originally making in Message 448 about the MASSIVE EROSION, you know, the erosion, or washing away, of all the sediment in Monument Valley around the monuments, that left a huge plain in the area. That's a LOT of erosion, massive erosion; and the erosion of the Grand Staircase and Grand Canyon area, cutting all those cliffs and those canyons down to the Kaibab which is another huge plain. That's MASSIVE erosion. A huge block of strata above the formations was washed away and then the formations were carved out of remaining strata down to the Kaibab in the GC area. My claim is that all this was the work of the receding Flood waters, and that the sediments were quite hard from compaction so that the cutting was possible. I am not talking about the Precambrian rocks of the GC. I'll let you know when I want to address those. Meanwhile the point I made in Message 448 still stands as evidence against the OE. I know you can't see it, professional blindess I guess, but maybe some day.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix link (looked like a copy/paste typo).

I understand, but this raises a couple questions. The question already asked and that your one sentence message doesn't answer was which layers do you expect should display evidence of "massive erosion", and why?Another question is what evidence suggests to you that the unconformities I listed (unconformities tell us that erosion occurred) were not "massive erosion"? When material has been eroded away and isn't there anymore, how do you tell how much was eroded away?Yet another question is how your flood both deposits and erodes layers at the same time?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.